Sporks are awesome. So is food.

Ever since our first visit to Akachochin in South Wharf, I’ve been dying to go back. The only thing that prevented a second visit was my rather sad attempts at austerity (which hasn’t been going so well but let’s not dwell on it). But the perfect opportunity came up for a revisit the other weekend when Celeste was in town for a conference. Along with Haz and Gazman, we all headed down to South Wharf for a long overdue catch up with Celeste.

As mentioned in my previous post, Akachochin is a Japanese izakaya style restaurant. The normal menu contains regional Japanese dishes with a slightly modern interpretation and during lunch time (between 12pm-4pm) they also offer a set menu that has two options. Both options cost $20.

Pork belly is *always* hard for me to pass up, and along with almost everyone else, this time was no exception. The only person who differed was Alastair, who was the odd one out in choosing the second set menu option.

Lunch was so good. Everything was great – the rice was good, the sashimi was fresh, the miso was excellent, and the pork belly was delicious.

If you don’t like the look of the set menu you can also order off the regular menu. We decided to be a bit greedy and add couple of serves of Akachochin’s chicken wing dumplings (2 for $15). These wings are deboned, marinated, stuffed with a dumpling mixture and then deep fried.

They weren’t quite as crunchy and swoon worthy as during our first visit but they were still pretty damn good.

We finished our meal with dessert. Ms Celeste had the sweet potato creme brulee ($12), which looked great but could’ve used more time under the brulee torch. The topping wasn’t quite set.

Alastair and I shared the black sesame panna cotta with green tea ice cream ($14). I’m on a black sesame love affair at the moment, so by the end I was wishing that we had ordered one each. It was a lovely dessert – smooth and creamy and gently flavoured with black sesame.

If you’ve been wanting to try out Akachochin but don’t want to commit to a full dinner, consider lunch – the set menu is a bargain for such good quality food.